Why meditate?

Today meditation has embedded itself within our culture and its immense benefits are increasingly recognised. It is applied across fields as wide ranging as leadership training, elite sports performance and emotional intelligence.

Inner stability to face life’s pressures

Meditation helps to bring a steadiness into life. This allows anyone to deal more effectively with daily events, without being unduly pushed from one place to another. Remaining at a point of stillness and equilibrium enables us to respond to the world and live in the world without being harassed and overcome by the world.

Inner peace to meet life’s challenges

Meditation leads to inner peace. It is a peace which is sorely needed in a world where there seem to be so many conflicts and tensions: within individuals, families, and nations. If we can experience that peace regularly and deeply it can in various ways help to rehumanise us, dissolve our inner tensions and conflicts, enabling more harmonious living and relationships.

The school & meditation

Students pursuing the Practical Philosophy course beyond the introductory course can choose to take up meditation in their second year (or earlier if requested). The School received the meditation practice from the head of the Advaita Tradition in Northern India, the then Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math. The aim from the beginning has been to make meditation available for whoever was seeking freedom, fullness of life or a deeper understanding of themselves.

Quotes on meditation

“Unless one has rest in love and happiness, one cannot survive, just as the body cannot survive without sleep. Meditation is to provide rest, to take people to blissful rest with the Self, so that they may have new and fresh mornings of life. By going into meditation, one recharges oneself with finer energy and comes out with extra energy filled with consciousness and bliss.The ultimate end of meditation is to reach profound stillness, which is very deep. In meditation one goes deeper, and comes to a stage where there is almost nothing moving, but this is not to be equated with nothing, for it is the most potent of all that this universe knows..”
Śrī Śāntānanda Saraswatī (1913-1997)
“When forced, as it seems, by thine environment to be utterly disquieted, return with all speed into thy self, staying in discord no longer than thou must. By constant recurrence to the harmony, thou wilt gain more command over it.”
Marcus Aurelius
“At the still point of the turning world. Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”
T S Eliot

Other languages?

The Practical Philosophy introductory courses are given in English, usually on Monday evenings, and are held in-person at the School house in Brussels. Separate courses are also available in French and Dutch. Visit our French or Dutch language websites for more information.


A real taste of philosophy

The next 10-week introductory course in Practical Philosophy starts September 16, 2024, at the School house in Brussels. 

Sessions are interactive, encouraging discussion with the tutor and between group members. The course fee is €90 which covers the 10 week term. Under-25 rate, €40.

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